The Chesterfield football history resource

The
only proper way to become a goalkeeper is to stand between the sticks
when the regular guy doesn't turn up. That happened to the 15-year old Gordon
Banks when he went to watch a local side, Millspaugh Steelworks. He let twelve
goals in during a trial for Rawmarsh Colliery and didn't hear from them again,
but Allen Pringle, a scout and coach to Chesterfield's juniors, saw something
in the lad and signed him as a seventeen-year-old in 1955 on amateur forms.

His
reputation was forged in Chesterfield Youths' run to the finals of the FA Youth
Cup in 1956, where the team lost 4-3 on aggregate to a team of Busby Babes
after referee Arthur Ellis (later to achieve fame on television's "Its a
Knockout") added on enough time for United to score the deciding goal. Ten
years later Banksy and one of his opponents that day, Bobby Charlton, would
play as team-mates in a rather more famous cup final!

He
signed as a pro upon completion of his National Service, at a wage of £17 a
week and graduated through the juniors, "A" team (where he broke an
arm against Sheffield Wednesday "A") and reserves to make his debut
on November 29th, 1958 against Colchester United. He ended Ron
Powell's run of 284 consecutive League appearances and kept him out of the side
until the end of the season, whereupon Leicester City offered £6,000 and the
cash-strapped Spireites snapped their hands off.

There
was considerable outcry at his sale, despite the comparatively large fee for
one so inexperienced. In the space of seven years at Leicester Banks matured
from a speculative punt in the transfer market (for them) into England's World
Cup winning goalkeeper. A £52,000 move to Stoke in 1967 brought Gordon his only
major domestic honour, a League Cup winners' medal in 1972, but a tally of 73
England caps that encompassed the successful 1966 World Cup campaign, and one
stunning, world-class save from Pele in Mexico, four years later, easily
confirms Banks as the finest English keeper of his or probably any other age.

One
of only three ex-Chesterfield players (that we know of) to be a recipient of an
Order of the British Empire - in this case, an OBE - Gordon was also the
Football Writers' Footballer of the Year in 1972 - again, a rare honour for a
goalkeeper. Other representative selections included two under-23 caps and six
games for the Football League XI. At club level, he won runners-up medals with
Leicester in the '61 and '63 FA Cup and the '65 League Cup before that single
domestic honour with Stoke.

When
he lost an eye in a car crash in October of 1972 Gordon retired, rather than
risk any failure to come up to his own high standards. He became Stoke's youth
coach in the summer of '73 before attempting a playing comeback in the United
States and Ireland. Although he found that the loss of an eye didn't present
the sort of problem that he first feared, age counted against him.

Gordon
returned to coaching at Port Vale in December 1978.The club performed poorly
during his time there, though, and he found himself relegated to coaching the
reserves by the following October before being dismissed one year after he
joined them. He became Manager of non-League Telford United in the following
January, but left in September, 1980. It is peculiar that so many of the '66
World Cup team that tried their hand at management did not succeed. Years after
that triumph, though, they were still famous men, and Gordon began to
capitalise on his well-deserved fame by working in the corporate hospitality
industry, while keeping up a footballing involvement by acting as the
specialist goalkeeping coach to Stoke and Aston Villa. In 1996 he toured the
country with other members of the '66 World Cup team in a chat show to
celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the greatest day in English football's
history. Poignantly, Chesterfield hosted one of those shows, and it was clear
that Gordon still held the club and his time here in the highest regard.